The need for rugged, low-maintenance and versatile self-service carts for personalized use in large public areas is clearly evident. Modern sprawling shopping centers (such as shopping malls) and large transportation passenger terminals (such as airports) exemplify a common need for such carts, in two diverse use applications. While each such use has differing special purpose requirements (e.g. the shopping center typically requires a cart for holding a plurality of packages, while the passenger terminal requires a cart for carrying heavy and/or bulky luggage), both have many common requirements. For example, both applications generally find a need for a child seat. Both require a cart that will withstand continuous day-to-day use and abuse by the public, with minimal required maintenance. Both require carts that can be readily used and accepted by the public, with minimal disruption to the business activities of the business establishment.
A number of different cart designs have been used for such applications in the past, most being special-purpose in nature. Shopping centers have typically used relatively small carts particularly intended as strollers, and offering little in the way of package carrying capability. For the most part, such strollers have, over time, become a nuisance to the business proprietors, both from maintenance and cart-distribution standpoints. Relatively few cart systems have been used successfully in transportation facilities due to a number of differing problems such as theft, unmanageability of free cart systems and cart distribution problems. With the huge traffic flow through today's busy terminals, however, the terminal baggage attendants cannot begin to handle the luggage handling needs of such establishments.
One cart system that has and is experiencing considerable success in airport terminals, and which offers the same use flexibility potential to shopping centers, is the automatic self-servicing cart vending system that provides a reward for return of the cart to strategically positioned vending islands. Such a system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,978,959, by the inventor hereof. In that system, the individual carts cooperatively engage with one another in "nesting" relationship, enabling high packaging density in a relatively small vending island, thereby offering considerable space-saving and order to cart distribution throughout a facility.
While the cart design disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,978,959, for use with the vending island system has displayed considerable success in passenger terminals, its usage has illustrated several areas in which improvements to the cart are desireable in order to improve versatility of the cart to both the shopping center and passenger terminal applications. For example, there is frequent need in passenger terminals for wheel chairs to move aged or disabled persons for short periods of time across the expanses of such terminals. Prior art luggage cart designs did not allow for safe carrying of adults on such carts. Therefore, the maintenance and policing of an adequate supply of wheel chairs for such purposes has been both impractical and costly for passenger terminal management. Similarly, most passenger terminals, like shopping centers, typically use escalators as the primary mode of movement between different floor levels. However, known prior art luggage carts, baby strollers and shopping carts have not been designed for safe, stable, or convenient use on escalators. With most prior art carts and strollers the bottom frame portion of the cart hangs up on or catches on the escalator stair treads, thus not allowing the cart wheels to continuously support the cart on the escalator in a safe and stable manner.
These are several of the problems addressed by the cart design of the present invention. The versatile self-service cart design of the present invention overcomes many of the deficiencies of prior art carts, and offers a versatile cart design which can be readily adapted for use in such differing environments as passenger terminals and shopping centers. As will become apparent upon a more detailed description of the invention, the present cart offers such improved use-versatility, without sacrificing ruggedness of construction, high reliability or its use in automatic self-service vending systems as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,978,959.